Notes and disclaimers in chapter one

A/N:This is a bit of a calm before the storm chapter, a bit of light relief. Hopefully you'll all still enjoy it and I promise that it's all action from next chapter on!

Thanks as ever to my wonderful beta, and fellow elbow appreciator, TraSan!
When Sam realised he needed information on the passengers, he knew there was only one person to see.

Finding him wasn't a challenge. The bar shifts were posted up on a board each morning so that anyone wanting to change their shift could easily consult the list and find someone to swap with. Sam's target wasn't on shift on that day so it wasn't difficult to work out where he'd be.

It was mid-afternoon when Sam walked in to the staff rec room. Dan was already there with his feet propped on the coffee table and some handheld game beeping in his hands while he tapped frantically away at the controls.

"Hey Dan," Sam called, walking casually over to settle into one of the comfy chairs.

"JB!" Dan grinned over to his friend and immediately closed up the game. "You finally broke free of the infirmary then. I thought 'Call me Nate' was going to hog your attention for the rest of the voyage."

Sam forced himself to smile, "Yeah. Me too. Even now, it's just a temporary release. I had to get out of there, you know. There's only so much rich person puke you can see."

"Eurgh, thanks for the visual, man." Dan crinkled up his nose. "You should talk to El Capitan about getting some other poor sucker to do it. You are wasted in there. Half the ladies on the cruise have been asking for you at the bar."

"And lose the massive tip I should be earning?" Sam snorted.

"True," Dan said, looking impressed. "I heard Natey-boy had one of the best suites in the place. He's got to be good for some serious green. Enough to put you into college and out the other end. You want a drink?" Dan stood and headed towards the drinks machine.

"Just a coke," Sam said, feeling a parch to his throat that had been ignored beneath the cacophony of other emotions clamouring for his attention. "So what gossip have I been missing?" Sam had long experience in wrangling a conversation over to occult matters though usually it was with people less sharp to manipulation than Dan.

"Most of the gossip is about your best buddy, Nathaniel. I swear he's got half the women on the boat lusting after him, you know the ones you aren't going gaa-gaa over you. If Janey wasn't so damn scary, there'd be a queue of women out there ready to give him the kiss of life."

Sam choked back a laugh, "Janey ain't that scary."

"Are you kidding? I had to go in there a couple of days back after I accidentally sliced my thumb cutting lemon slices." Dan held up the plaster-wrapped thumb, "She didn't stop lecturing me about it from the moment I walked in the door until the minute I finally escaped. When I asked if I could nip in and see you, she exploded! I got a twenty minute rant about patient privacy. Seriously, I think I was lucky to escape alive." Dan passed over the coke and settled back on the sofa, "You not sweet on her, are you?"

"No!" Sam hastily denied, "I guess I just spent a lot of time around her recently. She's cool."

"Hey, I'm not dissing her," Dan pointed out, holding his hands out in a defensive gesture and sloshing a little soda over the rim of the can onto the much-stained couch. "I heard all the Captain's stories about how she's saved his and others' butts from the line. She served in the military same as half the people aboard. It's no wonder she's a bit sharp round the edges. My Dad wanted me to follow him into the military but there's no fucking way I was going to do that. Biggest fight we ever had. I think he suggested this cruise in the hope I'd get a taste of the life and change my mind."

"Tell me about it. My Dad wanted me to follow in his footsteps too. Had a massive fight when I left for college."

"He push you for this job too?" Dan joked.

Sam shook his head, "No, he died. Six months ago, car crash." Sam hated the lie, hated saying his father died of something as banal as a car crash.

"Shit, man." Dan looked stunned, taking a long swig of his drink. "This a guilt thing then?"

"What?"

"You coming on this gig now 'cos it's what he would have wanted?"

"I…" Sam remembered his brother's words and shrugged. "I think so." He wasn't talking about the job that Dan thought he was but the truth still applied.

"To Dad's," Dan raised his can of cherry soda to 'clink,' "May they forever fuck us up and make us love them at the same time."

Sam found himself grinning along, "To Dad's." He took a mouthful of cold coke, "So come on, there has to be more gossip than just Nathaniel. I've had enough of him. Any of the passengers hooked up yet?"

"Nah, man. I had some serious bets down on who and how many your boy in the infirmary was gonna hook up with, cost me some serious cash when he got sick. I think the women are all saving themselves for him. Bunch of freaks. Did I tell you last cruise we had a woman casting a love spell in the middle of the bar area?"

'Damn it,' Sam thought. 'I'm on the wrong damn cruise.' "Seriously?"

"Completely. She was burning all kinds of weird shit and had a photo of one of the other passengers wrapped in a red ribbon. Captain confiscated it all as a fire risk."

'Finally something right,' Sam thought. 'As long as Jerry didn't toss it all overboard.' "Rich people are nuts."

"Yep but they tip well for the privilege of being nuts on a boat."

"Talking of nuts rich folk, I probably need to head back to Mr Edenridge again. Have to make sure Janey doesn't smother him with a pillow."

---

Sam didn't return to check in on Dean though as much as he wanted to. Instead he headed towards where he expected Jerry to be at this time of day. As he expected, he found the man in his office, squinting over paperwork. Sam made a formality of tapping on the door but walked straight in anyway.

"Sam," Jerry looked up with a smile. "What can I do for you?"

"Dan said you confiscated some supplies off a passenger on the last trip, a woman trying to do a faux-Wiccan love ritual."

Jerry frowned, "Yes. But I thought the critter causing problems didn't have anything to do with magic or I would have mentioned it."

Sam was tempted to give Jerry a lecture but his inner chiding voice told him he'd been giving Jerry a hard enough time as it was so he just said, "No, the ritual itself won't have caused any problems, even if it worked. I'll need some supplies to get rid of the Siren and there's a good chance there's some genuine useful ingredients amongst the rubbish."

"Anything you want is yours. I got them in here somewhere. I meant to chuck them out once we were back in dock except with all the drama of that man jumping off I never got around to it." Jerry frowned, "Now where did I put it?"

Sam not-so-subtly tapped his foot in increasing tempo, a technique which usually worked on Dean. He watched somewhat proudly as Jerry's searching sped up in time. Sam would have given himself a round of applause if it wouldn't be rather obvious. Eventually Jerry paused at one of the many boxes that formed an entirely separate wall in his office, "Ah, here we are." He tugged one down, managing by some minor miracle not to topple the rest. "All yours."

Sam took hold off the box and recoiling slightly from the pungent aromas emanating from the thin cardboard. "Mind if I take it with me? I don't think you want to explain to the staff why your office stinks of patchouli."

"Be glad for it to be gone," Jerry replied. "There's been a lingering odour in here for a while now."

Sam refrained from a retort about body odour, remembering that it wasn't Dean or Bobby he was talking to. "What do you want done with the stuff I don't want?"

"Toss it or keep it," Jerry stated casually. "Doesn't matter a whit to me."

---

Sam got some odd looks ferrying the overly fragrant box through the corridors but he gave them no heed. Worse case scenario he could make up a story about Mr Edenridge wanting to try aromatherapy: even if that destroyed any chance of Dean's cover image being considered macho ever again. Apparently everyone was used to some oddities though as no-one gave him more than a second glance and a rare crinkle of the nose.

Sam idly regretted having given Dean's room out so quickly as it would have been the perfect place to pore through the box. Instead he had to make do with setting the box on his bunk in the shared room and hoping his blankets wouldn't stink of pot pourri for the next week.

The first few finds at the top of the box was the usual sort of crap Sam'd expected a wannabe-Wiccan to tote around. A couple of pentagram necklaces, some scented jos sticks and a dark red candle, wick untouched. Next came the layer of little herb baggies that the woman had probably been convinced were mystical herbs and were far more likely to be crunched up leaves and some oregano.

Finally Sam hit jackpot at the bottom amongst the sticky residue of something that Sam really didn't want to think about. A couple of large bags contained pungent bark that Sam identified as matching the description of barberry. Most of the bag had been crushed to the point of uselessness for the ritual but Sam could see some long pieces which had been preserved. He laid out one of his t-shirts on the bed and methodically extracted the longest pieces. He would need twelve in all, three for each of the cardinal points, but it wouldn't harm to have some spare. He ended up with fourteen bits which definitely wasn't as big a safety margin as he'd wanted.

He wrapped them carefully in his t-shirt and then wrapped that t-shirt in another t-shirt. He wanted to wrap the two t-shirts in another t-shirt but he was swiftly running out of t-shirts unless he wanted to walk half-naked around deck.

A trip to the kitchen had Sam loaded down with enough rosemary, sage, garlic and mint to make a decent BBQ dressing for about thirty people, the latter two he had arranged to have mixed into all of Dean's food.

Blood of a virgin turned out to be a little more tricky.

---

"Excuse me, miss?" Sam had already had to wait thirty minutes for his target to detach herself from a crowd of croneys which had meant thirty minutes of listening to their banal conversation. He often teased his brother about being dumb but these passengers could make Dean look like a paid-up MENSA member. Truth be told, Sam suspected his brother wasn't half as dumb as Dean apparently wanted Sam to think.

"JD." The target glee'd at him, flashing teeth so white that her orthodontist must be a very rich man. Her plastic surgeon was also laughing in it judging by her nose and lips.

"JB," Sam politely corrected. "Dr Haydlebrook asked me to have a word with you. Mr Edenridge is suffering from a little anaemia and your medical records show that you are a perfect match for his blood type."

"Ooooh," The target said, a long drawn out sound with no evidence of any thought behind it. "Poor Mr Edenridge. It's not contagious, is it?"

'Only around vampires,' Sam mentally added. "The doctor doesn't think so. Mr Edenridge could use a blood transfusion in order to aid his recovery."

"Ooooh," The target made that noise again, the vapid hiss of air that was already making Sam's teeth grit together. She blinked mascara-darkened eye lashes at him repeatedly to the point where Sam wondered if that part of her anatomy was having its own epileptic seizure without inviting the rest of her body to the party. "Sooooo?" She asked.

"So Dr Haydlebrook was wondering if you would be willing to donate some blood. Unfortunately the ship can't carry a fully stocked blood bank and they used most that matched Mr Edenridge in an unfortunate incident in the kitchen with a vegetable peeler." It was all lies. Janey was a far wiser doctor than to short herself on a blood supply on a major cruise but Sam figured this girl was unlikely to be smart enough to tie her shoes in the morning, let alone figure that out.

"Ooooooh," The target said. Sam decided the noise wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't accompanied by a glistening pastel pink pout. "I would love to help but I really don't like needles."

Judging by the amount of botox it must have taken to achieve the taut skin on the human barbie's face, Sam found himself doubting that statement. "Oh, that's a shame," Sam said casually. "Only Mr Edenridge was saying he'd be so grateful if someone could help him out that he'd be sure to take that person out to dinner." Dean was going to kill him for this but as long as Dean was alive to kill him, Sam pretty much didn't care.

"Ooooh." Sam was beginning to wonder if that was a deliberate noise or whether the woman had some kind of strange lung deformity that created the sound whenever she inhaled to speak. "Gosh, Mr Edenridge. He is cute." Her eyelids fluttered rapidly again and Sam began to wonder if that was some indication of how much brain power she was using. It would certainly explain the lack of eyelash movement during most of the conversation. "How much blood would he need?"

Sam would have liked to drain the girl dry, just to avoid inflicting her on the rest of humanity. "Just a little, enough to perk him up a little." Pimping out his brother seemed oddly dirty. "You won't even notice it's gone." She was so dim you could probably chop off her head and she wouldn't notice for a day or so, probably not until she decided her sunglasses weren't sitting right anymore.

"Oooooh." Sam began reciting a mantra in his head. 'Dean needs this. Dean is your brother. You love your brother. Your brother is worth anything. Your brother is going to owe you big time for this.' He repeated it until the urge to beat the girl until her brain cells woke up subsided. "It won't hurt, will it?"

Sam shook his head, "Of course not. Dr Haydlebrook is the best there is." It probably would hurt a little but it was nothing compared to the headache her stupidity was giving Sam.

"Ooh." Sam began to wonder whether God was giving him a break as the irritating noise at least truncated itself, "And then Mr Edenridge will go on a date with me?"

"As soon as he is feeling better," Sam assured her. Maybe Dean wouldn't mind that much. I mean, she was blonde, stupid and a virgin: that had to be enough to stop Dean to killing Sam where he stood. Sam failed to convince even himself of that.

"Ooooooooooooooh." Sam revoked his faith in a generous and benevolent deity at the drawn-out sound. "Chop-chop, JD. Can't keep Mr Edenridge waiting."

---

Janey had glowered at Sam as soon as he had walked into the infirmary, vapid blonde in tow. "Libby here has agreed to donate some blood to aid Mr Edenridge's recovery. Isn't she generous?" Sam told the doctor, his smile clearly stating, 'I've had to put up with her for the past hour, your turn.'

Janey clattered the instrument she was holding down a little harder than necessary then made her way to the 'patient.' "Hi there, I'm Dr Haydlebrook."

"Ooooooooh." Libby said.

Janey arched an eyebrow over to Sam and there was a definite twitch in her cheek, "Have you given blood before?"

Libby paused and pursed her lips in thought as if that was the final question on 'Who wants to be a millionaire?' "I gave some clothes to the African orphans once. Those poor children were in a dire need of Versace."

The twitch in Janey's cheek became more pronounced and Sam added a name to the list of people he would need to apologise by the time this was over. "Well, blood donation is very similar." Janey lied. "You'll feel a little prick and then just relax for a while and I'll do all the work." She turned to Sam with a face like a thunderstorm, "JB, care to help me with preparations?" She motioned to the opposite corner of the room.

Sam slumped over, perfecting his puppy-dog stare on the way over.

"What. The. Hell?" Janey enunciated each word in a bitten-down angry tone, chewing straight through Sam's puppy-dog.

"We need the blood of a virgin." Sam explained, "It's a whole purity, anti-Siren thing."

Janey did a double-take and glanced back to the girl amusing herself by counting how many fingers she had. "And she's a…?"

"So reliable sources say," Sam said. He wasn't sure whether to believe it himself however she seemed to be the only shot according to Dan.

"Huh." Janey said, "How much do you need?"

"Not too much. Just need to dip the bullets in it."

"Dipping bullets in blood?" Janey said cheerfully, "Boy, your job must have all the best stories. Fine, I'll do this but you owe me, big time. I'll need to do an anaemia test on twiggy over there and if she fails it, there's nothing I can do."

Sam pondered the possibility of getting Mr Edenridge to take Libby out for several large steaks in order to up her iron count. Of course that would require explaining why Mr Edenridge was wearing earplugs. Then again, Sam wouldn't be surprised if most of Libby's dates had to resort to such devices. "That's fine."

Fortunately Libby turned out to have a high enough red blood cell count to justify the small amount of blood that Janey would need to extract. Sam stayed in the background for most of the procedure, getting some vicarious pleasure out of the hiss the blonde made as the needle was inserted. It was over quickly and Libby skipped out of the infirmary ordering JD to let her know when Mr Edenridge was up and about.

Sam now had all the supplies. All he needed was a distraction for the Siren to put the plan into action and the only solution he could come up with was the one he really didn't like.